Please talk to me about self assessment and reducing payments on account

[xlatia]

I'm in the process of filing my tax return online and am not sure if I've got the following thing right:

I'm self-employed. Last year I reduced my payments on account for the tax year 2013-14 because I was on maternity leave for 9 months of that year, hence I knew that my taxable income would drop significantly. So I reduced that payment to 400 pounds in total (numbers made up for illustrative purposes). Now, after having finished my return online I know for fact that I'll only have to pay 100 pounds of tax in total. The first payment on account in January was 200 pounds, the other one, due in July, will be another 200 pounds. So far so logical.

Now I'm wondering if it's safe to reduce my payments for the year 13-14 again, to 0 pounds, seeing as I've already paid off all my tax with the January payment? Does anyone know if that's ok to do or will it come to bite me in the back?

That's fine,
I've done it before for dh and you can go as far as to claim any overpayment it then creates.

Alternatively if you're submitting your return now anyway, make sure you tick the right boxes for reclaiming any overpayment and enter your bank account details.

thanks SATS. i already checked the overpayment boxes and all. they wouldn't keep the amount overpaid if i didn't do this, would they?!?

Not keep it no, but sometimes you need to ask for it to be repaid if for some reason it doesn't happen automatically.

If you are getting an overpayment repaid I am assuming your payments for 14/15 are £nil per the calculation?

Just make sure you have enough saved to cover any tax due in January 16 relating to 14/15 year as you will be back working full time I assume this year after your maternity leave.

If your annual bill is under £1000 they should take you back off payments on account

but yes, hassle the little blighters for any overpayments

my annual bill is not usually under £1000, just this year because of mat leave. thanks everyone, will reduce the second payment then, yay!